Days of future past

2 comments September 25th, 2008

Awhile back a reader inquired about using the phrase “pushed back” in reference to something that has been rescheduled for later. For example, when we report that trash pickup will be pushed back a day during a holiday week. The reader suggested it should be “pushed forward.”

It’s the old perspective thing again.

Most of us think of time as a continuous thing moving inexorably from past to future. Logically, then, “back” would be toward the past and “forward” would be up ahead on the calendar.

However, if you take the point of view that the future is moving toward us, something that is rescheduled earlier is moved forward and something that’s reset for later is moved back.

The logic may be a bit strained, but the idiom is sound. A Google search yields more than 4.4 million instances of “pushed back.” I didn’t check them all, but the ones I did all had the same sense of occurring later.

A search of “pushed forward” produces about 811,000 examples — meaning moved to an earlier date.

This time travel stuff is tough on everyone.